Magpie Murders is the ninth entry in the internationally-acclaimed Atticus Pünd series by Alan Conway, where Atticus investigates a mysterious series of deaths in the sleepy English village of Saxby-on-Avon. You may find this a bit strange. Perhaps because despite supposedly being "internationally-acclaimed," you've never heard of Atticus Pünd before... or perhaps because the gigantic image above this paragraph says it was actually written by Anthony Horowitz. And there is a very good reason for this!
Magpie Murders is a standalone murder mystery by Anthony Horowitz, and revolves around a manuscript titled
Magpie Murders, which is the ninth entry in the fictional Atticus Pünd series by fictional author Alan Conway. The manuscript is not merely an abstract plot device; the first half of the novel comprises (almost) the entire text of Conway's story. In this review, in order to differentiate between
Magpie Murders the Horowitz novel and
Magpie Murders the Conway script, I will be referring to the Conway manuscript as the "inner story" and the rest of the novel as the "outer story."
It's great.
Magpie Murders is at once a homage, master class, shining example, and deconstruction of classic detective fiction. The inner and outer stories are each a murder mystery of a different flavor, so you get two murder mysteries for the price of one. It's smart, clever, and satisfying. I wrote that
Moonlight Game felt like a detective novel written by a mystery fan, but
Magpie Murders feels like a detective novel written
for mystery fans.
